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[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi, everyone. I am Martín Acuña, and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:16] Martín Acuña: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Backstage Talk. Today's guest is Mara Lucas.

[0:23] Martín Acuña: She got her theatrical start dancing to the music on The Weather Channel, and she hasn't stopped moving since. She has performed professionally on stages all over the country in the United States and at sea. Some of her favorites include playing Fabiola in Warren Carlyle's Havana, leading player on the national tour of Pippin, which is one of my favorite musicals ever, and is a swing on the first national tour of Summer, the Donna Summer Musical. She is also the founder of Center Center, a company committed to revolutionizing the way the theater industry thinks and talks about swings. Through the company, she is working to expand the information and tools available to support swings in the challenging, nuanced, and exciting work they do.

Actually, I got to Mara thanks to TikTok, because I was, like, as one usually does, swiping through the feed, and she popped up. And she was like, well, these are, like, I don't know, the three best advices things for swings. And I was like, being a swing is part of the performer journey in musical theater. And I was like, okay, follow her. And since then, that was a couple of months back. And since then, I've been like, this is really good content that people need to see. So Mara, I am really excited, really happy to have you over on Backstage Talk. So welcome to the show.

[2:02] Mara Lucas: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

[2:04] Martín Acuña: So you've performed a lot. You've been overseas on national tours. So tell us a little bit more about yourself and then a random fun fact about you.

[2:14] Mara Lucas: Yeah, so I really had a pretty straightforward trajectory getting into theater. I started in dance. I then went into choir in middle school. I took a class on musical theater when I was like, I don't know, 12. And just loved it. And that same, like, school that taught the class allowed me to then join the summer musical that they did. And it's been going ever since. Through high school, through college, I've been studying theater and been on this path for quite some time. And so it really was a very logical pathway to get to a professional career. A random fun fact about me is I am actually related to Frank Lucas, like the gangster, American gangster Frank Lucas.

[3:14] Martín Acuña: No way.

[3:15] Mara Lucas: Yeah. He's like the long-lost uncle? He's like, yeah, far enough back there that I didn't actually know him before he died. But we are very much so related.

[3:29] Martín Acuña: Okay, well, that is a really nice fun fact. Like, that's a first. Do what I can.

[3:37] Martín Acuña: Okay, so let's dive a little bit deeper on your performing journey. So you just mentioned high school and that you were in summer musicals, but which was your aha moment when you said, this is my life?

[3:51] Mara Lucas: Yeah. So I got to play Joe March when I was in high school, which is something that I thought that I would never do because historically that's not a role that is accurate to the human that I am. And it was the first time that I had really played a significant lead in a musical and felt like I could hold down a show and really support a cast through a show because we were, I mean, it's high school and they're like, I don't know, six leads. So we were double cast. And so I was in the B cast and we were all a little bit salty about that in the way that you are in high school. But being able to see my cast through that process as a leader and as the lead of a show and be able to demonstrate to myself that I was capable of doing that. And I was like, I want to feel like this forever. I love it. I absolutely love it.

[4:56] Martín Acuña: So in the performing arts is like huge and you can do a lot of things. So why musical theater and why are you on your path to Broadway?

[5:02] Mara Lucas: Musical theater, because it is the center of the Venn diagram of all of the things that I loved doing. So like, I loved to dance. I loved to sing. I loved to act. And it was like, okay, well, that's all three of the things put together. I guess that's where we're going. And I tried like film and commercial sort of things. And I just missed the energy of everything being right in that moment, the ability to stop and start over and do another take and keep doing it until we get it right. Did nothing for me. I want it to be high stakes and in that moment and problem solving. If something goes wrong, like I don't want to just cut and do another take.

[5:47] Martín Acuña: You like the adrenaline.

[5:50] Mara Lucas: In very specific ways. Like this is, I'm not a rollercoaster person. You would never catch me like skydiving or any of that, but I do like a little bit of adventure in my theater.

[6:01] Martín Acuña: I love it. Absolutely love it. So let's talk about being a swing in musical theater. So what does it mean for the people that don't know what a swing is? What does it mean to be a swing in musical theater?

[6:14] Mara Lucas: Yeah. So at the ground level, a swing is the understudy for members of the ensemble. And that can look different depending on the contracts. Sometimes that's just a few people. Like the Hamilton swings tend to cover five tracks. My first swing contract, I covered 13 tracks, which is very different. And it's a lot more complicated than, you know, fill in for this person. If they go on vacation, it's a lot of nuanced, intimate knowledge of your show. It's really about keeping the continuity of the show for the audience. So however that takes shape, whether that someone gets injured in the middle of a performance and the show has to keep going. And so you jump into that spot or whether it's planned months in advance, it's about making sure that the show can continue with its integrity.

[7:11] Martín Acuña: That is mind-blowing. I've never been a swing yet. I think that the things I've covered is mainly two tracks, but never nothing else. And if covering two different characters was hard, I cannot imagine 13. So how do you divide your brain to do that or take notes, have your bible or several bibles for each role?

[7:36] Mara Lucas: Yeah. So there are a lot of different things that go into it for me. The first of which is I have a very detailed and specific note strategy. I know exactly how I want everything laid out when I go into a project. And part of that is because I've been a swing multiple times in varying capacities. So I've had time to really work on that. But that's the biggest component is knowing how you want to set your notes up and knowing what goes into setting your notes up to actually be able to support you through all of that, because it really can get to be a lot. When you're covering two tracks, three tracks, you can maybe keep all of that information clear in your head. You can't do that with 13 tracks.

At a certain point, you have to have a system for how to keep track of that information. And so that's the biggest component is figuring out how you want to organize all of this information, because you can't. There's a threshold where you just can't keep it all in your head. And that's a moving target, like it's different for different people. But you've got to have a plan on the off chance that you do book your first swing contract. And they're like, hey, you're covering the entire ensemble. It wasn't the entire ensemble. But I did start out with eight tracks. And then at this probe, my dance captain came to me and was like, hey, so you're now covering these five extra tracks. And I was like, you're so funny. Like, that was really funny. You had me for a second. You're hilarious. Good joke. And he was like, no, I'm not kidding. You're covering these extra five tracks now. And I was like, okay.

[9:16] Mara Lucas: Okay, great. I'll go learn some extra tracks. It's fine. I've never been in rehearsals for two of these tracks. But fine, whatever. I'll figure it out. So really having some sort of plan when it comes to just how to catalog everything. And then for me, it's really about keeping the least possible amount of functional information. So like, there's the big picture stuff that you have to know about your show, how things move, how everything fits together. And that lives with you at all times. But on any given day, when I am swinging into a track, I only want the information that I need for that specific track. And even if that's a split track, if I'm combining different roles and tracks and characters together, I still only want the information that is relevant to what I am doing today, because it helps to avoid any extra confusion because it's already confusing. So keeping that as streamlined as possible goes a long way.

[10:26] Martín Acuña: I can imagine. So like, you take a bunch of notes, and you just said that you had a system for those notes. So can we dive into that system or tell us a little bit of how you do your notes?

[10:38] Mara Lucas: Yeah. So I start in a notebook. I really like to have a pencil and some paper for a few reasons. One, because I know that nobody's going to tell me that I can't have that in a rehearsal room. And there are still some folks who don't believe in having your devices in rehearsal or things like that. They don't want to see you on your phone. And I don't want to have to change my strategy because somebody is scared that I'm sitting on TikTok during rehearsal, which I don't have the time to be doing that. But in case we're concerned, I like to use pencil and paper. So my notes during rehearsal are all handwritten. And then I go back and pick out the information that is relevant to a specific track.

So I'll start at the top of that person's show and just work my way through all of the show-wide notes that I have and then create a tracking sheet just for that person. And my tracking sheets are pretty, well, they vary because the amount of information that I need for any given track really depends on the track and how familiar I am with it. So I will often start with a lot of information and then scale things down as I become more comfortable with the track or as I find that I don't need things anymore. So it's definitely an art, not a science. But like I said, I've had some time to really get comfortable with it. So I know what I absolutely need to have. I know which things I like to have. And then the rest of it, we sort of feel it out as we go along.

[12:15] Martín Acuña: Absolutely love it. So what would be the best advice that you would tell performers, either young, old, with a lot of trajectory, still studying about being a swing in musical theater?

[12:22] Mara Lucas: Yeah, the first thing that I would say is I would say the difficulty with being a swing is that you really can't evaluate your performance the same way that you would if you had a full rehearsal process. Because you won't get a full rehearsal process. You might not get a rehearsal. So you can't look at it the same way that you would if you had had all of that time and you had familiarity with your castmates and with the space and your props and your set pieces. You have to look at things a little bit differently and really keep sight of what is actually possible because it's just not going to, it's not going to be the same as when you are fully rehearsed and you've been through a whole process.

I keep like a three-point system for success, which is if the show doesn't stop, if no one gets hurt, and if the audience has no real reason to know that you were there, that success is a swing. Because if you start diving in deeper than that and you're trying to get every moment perfect, you're trying to make sure that you look as rehearsed as the people around you, you will make yourself absolutely crazy. Because it's just not the same. So you can't evaluate it the same way. And that I think is the biggest thing for people starting out. Because we all, we all want to be doing our best work. We want to be doing our jobs as well as we possibly can. And I think a lot of us are really hard on ourselves. And so managing those expectations and knowing that you have to up front goes a long way towards allowing you to feel like you're doing your job well, because your job is just different.

[14:16] Martín Acuña: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I admire swings so much. Like I remember when Broadway reopened and tours reopened, that they were, we were all...

[14:52] Martín Acuña: And it's so incredible. So, on one side, thank you for your work. And on the other, let's talk about CenterCenter. So tell us about your company. What do you do? What do you offer? How can people get to you? Yeah, all of that?

[15:08] Mara Lucas: Yeah. So, to that same thinking, CenterCenter is really a company that was born out of the awareness that people were going to be cast as swings. It's one of those things that's been sort of in development for me since my first swing contract because I got cast as a swing as a part of a larger contract. So, it was three shows running in repertory and six months worth of work. And I was like, I've never been a swing before, but I'm not going to say no to six months of work because I don't know how to do it. So, I tried to figure out how to do it ahead of time. And there really wasn't a lot of information about even what a swing functionally was beyond like, yeah, you're going to go in for whoever if they're out of the show.

But it's never that simple. And there just wasn't a whole ton of information. And so, that for me has been something that always felt wrong. People knew about it. And I could see that people knew about it because I knew people down the line who had been swings and could tell you about being a swing. And I spoke to people who got cast as swings for the first time and who were like, hey, you've done this. Can you tell me about it? And I was like, it shouldn't have to be word of mouth. Like, there's just no excuse for us to not be sharing this information when it is so available. And so, that's really what we do. It started with notebooks. So, we make two different lines of notebooks. The first one is designed specifically for swings.

And the other one is because you won't always be cast as a swing. So, you might still want a notebook that can work with you and really be adapted to your rehearsal process. Because the other thing about it is when you have a system as fortified and structured as the one that I have, taking your notes in a standard notebook and trying to anticipate how many pages you will need to designate for each number and trying to figure out how to put your notes in order when your show is never rehearsed in order is just one of those things that I was like, this isn't going to work for me. So, I started making notebooks where you can move all of the pages around so that you can actually organize the handwritten notes into whether that's the structure of like your formation charts and your notes for a number together or all of your formation charts and all of your other notes, like however you need to do it to accommodate the fact that you want to review in order at the end of the day.

And you should be able to have everything in one place. Because I was, for summer, I had a $0.99 dollar store notebook that had nothing, like nothing designed for what I was doing and a binder with my script score and all of my formation charts. And one of the things about Sergio is that Sergio is very, very particular about his numbers and he loves formation changes. And so there, I had, I think, 60 different formation charts for summer and I was like, this is just a lot. And I was able to get them from stage management. They were printing them off for me. Everything was great. But I was like, if they weren't providing me with these, that is a lot of rectangles to draw to be able to keep track of what's going on in my show.

And they don't account for depth. You just need something that's going to be accurate because it's about safety at that point. Knowing where you're supposed to be, making sure that you understand, especially depth. Because I feel like that's the first thing to get lost when you're just drawing your own little formation charts, which is obviously better than nothing. But it's better to actually know where you're going when you're jumping in for the first time. So anyway, there's a notebook for swings. And from there, the next step became starting to distribute some of this information. Because I think what happens a lot of times is that there's a mentality of every swing is different, so we couldn't teach it.

And that's not incorrect. Every swing is different because every swing is relying on their strengths. For example, I don't notate every step of choreography because I've been dancing my entire life. I'm going to know the choreography whether I want to or not. So that's something that I don't need to spend a whole ton of time on. But other people might want more of the choreography written out. You're going to have to cater to your own strengths. But at the end of the day, there are a handful of things that you must be accounting for in order for your notes to be comprehensive, in order for your system to work. And we can talk about what those things are. We can teach that foundation level of where those mileposts are so that you know where you're going and what information you need to capture.

And then you can figure it out from there how you want to keep your notes, how you want to do things, how you like to do things. But the bottom line is there are parts of it that are the same every time, and we can teach those. And so through Center Center, we have a notes master class. So that covers the different ways that you can keep your notes, different formats, and really what needs to go into your notes for them to be comprehensive so that when you go to swing in, you actually have all of the information that you need. And then I also lead swing workshops at universities. And so basically, that's an immersive experience that offers students the opportunity to swing into something before your reputation, your paycheck is ever at stake.

[21:12] Martín Acuña: Yeah, because that's a lot of it is trial and error and getting that out of the way before you are professionally being assessed, based on how well you do it goes such a long way.

[21:25] Mara Lucas: Absolutely, because they don't teach you how to be a swing. They always train you to be the lead. But they never teach you how to be an understudy, how to cover a track, how to be a swing, how to out of the blue, you get a call, maybe an hour before a show and be like, hey, we need you get to the theater, right? They don't teach you that. They teach you a lot of valuable things, but not like, yeah, you get it. They don't teach us these type of things.

[21:56] Mara Lucas: Yeah, well, and one of the things that really resonates for me is if you know how to be a swing, you know how to be an understudy, you know how to be a standby, an alternate because being a swing is the most expansive version of those things, but all coverage jobs are essentially the same.

[22:15] Martín Acuña: Yeah, exactly.

[22:16] Mara Lucas: And so that really gives you the skills that you need. Plus, those skills are good for other things. Like I've used a lot of the strategies that I have for immediate replacement contracts, where you're jumping right in, the show's already going, you need to get on stage in a week. And so you have to learn everything as fast as you can. And really being able to move through that quickly goes such a long way for a lot of things. It also helps with auditions.

[22:41] Martín Acuña: Absolutely. You start to catch things way faster than the rest.

[22:45] Mara Lucas: Yeah, well, knowing which things are really, really important and figuring out how to build those into what you're doing to be able to say like, okay, even if it all falls apart, I know that I have to be in this pose on this count.

[23:01] Martín Acuña: Yeah, absolutely. Before we wrap everything up, what's the risk you've taken that has totally paid off?

[23:12] Mara Lucas: Accepting my contract for summer as a swing. Because I didn't initially want to swing that show.

[23:19] Martín Acuña: Okay.

[23:21] Mara Lucas: I had been auditioning for a while for that. Initially, I was in for Disco Donna, and then I was in for Ensemble Cover Disco. And then we had final callbacks. And then I got called in again, to do more things. And it started to become apparent to me that I had read for probably every character in the show at that point. And I was like, interesting. And then the casting director was like, hey, would you be interested in a swing contract? And I was like, no, not really. That's not what I thought I was getting. And so we went back and forth about it for a little while. And then eventually, she sent me an email that said, Sergio and Des really want you to be a swing. And I was like, okay. If they ask?

[24:11] Martín Acuña: I was like, if that's what it's coming down to, then yeah, okay. I'll be a swing for Sergio and Des. But it really forced me to get really, really good at what I was doing. Because my first swing contract was where I started to build all of this out. And I had swung some smaller things. But this was the first time that I had really been pushed as a swing. I was on all the time for summer. Like, every city, a lot. Over half of the performances. And bouncing around through different tracks as we went. Sometimes, like, different Sisters of Ghana days back to back, things like that. It was really, really challenging. And it demonstrated to me that my system worked, first of all. But also just how complicated it can all actually get.

And I was like, you can't do this. If this is your first time swinging and you don't know anything about it, this would have been so difficult to do. And so it brought me a lot of stability on what I was doing and what I felt needed to be shared with other people.

[25:30] Martín Acuña: I absolutely love that. And thank God you took that contract.

[25:36] Mara Lucas: Okay, last question before we wrap up. What are your top five favorite musical theater shows?

[25:43] Mara Lucas: Okay, so I'm not a favorites person. I will put together a list. But I don't like to pick favorites because I have a different favorite for different, like, subcategories. So, like, shows where I really love the choreography or shows that I'm attached to because I found them as a teenager and I played them over and over again in my car. So, two that I know for sure right off the bat, Kiss of the Spider Woman is one of my favorite musicals. And then Once on this Island, also very close to my heart.

[26:19] Martín Acuña: Revival or Original?

[26:21] Mara Lucas: Both. Both. All of them.

[26:26] Martín Acuña: It's such a good show.

[26:27] Mara Lucas: It really is. And when it is done justice, because it's, you know, it's a show that children's theater groups like to do, and it makes it difficult to get into all of the nuance of that show. But in its fullest integrity, it is so moving and so beautiful. Big fan of Pippin. Leading Player was a dream role. Very happy that I got to do that. So that definitely makes the top five. Come From Away, also a big one for me. And then John and Jen, which is a show that I discovered in high school, and I used to keep on repeat on a burned CD in my car. And it's a two person show, so you can absolutely perform the whole of it by yourself in your car.

[27:17] Martín Acuña: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that. Mara, thank you so much for coming over, for sharing your incredible expertise. If people want to contact you and get in touch with Center Center, where can all of them find you?

[27:36] Mara Lucas: Yeah, so the easiest way is through our website, which is at centercenter.com. So at centercenter.com. That is sort of the nexus for everything else. But also, we are very active on TikTok.

[27:54] Martín Acuña: Yes.

[27:55] Mara Lucas: And the handle there is at the character and then at Center Center. So really, if you put AP Center Center into your browser, you will find us.

[28:07] Martín Acuña: Yes. So thank you so much for being here. I have loved this conversation.

[28:12] Mara Lucas: No, you did great.

[28:14] Martín Acuña: I cannot wait to see you on stage swinging and grinding and doing that great stuff that you know how to do.

[28:24] Mara Lucas: Thank you.

[28:25] Martín Acuña: Thanks everyone for listening to this new episode of Backstage Talk. Remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Backstage Talk Podcast.